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Updated: May 6, 2025
I noticed, too, that the inside of the bulwarks, her deck-fittings, brass-work, and guns, were all scrupulously clean and bright, while every rope was carefully coiled upon its proper pin, the principal halliards and sheets being Flemish-coiled on the deck. In fact, the whole appearance of the vessel was far more suggestive of the British man-o'-war than of the slaver.
A hasty glance round the deck showed that our bulwarks and deck-fittings had been considerably damaged by the felucca's fire; and some eight or nine prostrate forms O'Flaherty's among them bore still further witness to its destructive effect. The boatswain came up to me and said: "Poor Mr O'Flaherty's down, sir; and you're hurt, yourself. Who is to take command of the schooner, sir?"
Our snow-white decks, unencumbered by anything save the long- boat and pinnace stowed upon the booms, the handsome range of formidable guns on either side, with their gear symmetrically arranged and tackle- falls neatly coiled down, the substantial bulwarks topped by their immaculate hammock-cloths, the gleaming polished brass-work of the various deck-fittings, the taunt spars, with their orderly maze of standing and running rigging and their broad expanse of gleaming well- cut canvas, and last, but by no means least, the stalwart sun-burned crew in their neat, clean, fine weather suits, presented a striking contrast to the scene on board the Truxillo, where confusion, disorder, and a very perceptible amount of dirt still reigned supreme.
Ladders, gratings, stanchions, and all movable deck-fittings were below the water-line. Wooden bulkheads, productive of splinters, were knocked down and discarded, while all boats, with the plugs out, were overboard, riding to a sea-anchor made up of oars and small spars. The crew was at quarters.
Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder smashed. Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.
The sight he saw would have been horrid to a healthy mind, but it only moved this man to increased and uncontrollable merriment. The two rails below leading to the stem had arisen before him in a shadowy triangle; and within it were the deck-fittings he had mentioned. The windlass had become a thing of horror, black and forbidding.
And next it we observe a very powerfully executed oil painting representing a schooner-yacht, with topmasts struck and all other top-hamper down on deck, hove-to under close-reefed storm-trysail and spitfire jib, in close proximity to an evidently disabled and sinking ocean steamer, over whose more than half-submerged hull the mountain seas are breaking with terrific violence, sweeping away boats, hencoops, deck-fittings, bulwarks, and even some of the unfortunate people, who are dimly seen through the torrents of driving spray and cataracts of pouring water clinging here and there to the stanchions and rigging: the fury of the gale in which the great ship is perishing is admirably conveyed in the height and shape of the huge olive-green seas, their crests torn off and swept away to leeward in horizontal showers of spindrift, and the black, menacing hue of the sky, across which tattered shreds of smoky-looking cloud are careering wildly.
She carried a magnificent full poop that reached as far forward as to within about twenty-five feet of the main-mast, with companion, skylight, deck-fittings generally, and poop ladders of polished teak, handsomely and elaborately carved.
Passing each other in such disagreeably close proximity, we had of course a perfect view of the French frigate, and a most superb craft she certainly was. A bran-new ship, to all appearance: she seemed to have been at sea scarcely long enough to wash the varnish off her teak and mahogany deck-fittings.
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